Monday.
It's an interesting feeling to know the day you will have your baby. You are given a due date very early on based on little detail, and only 5% of women have their babies on that day. I also learned later that most first pregnancies are a week late (what was all my fuss about then?). But when you are given that due date it's engraved in your mind and you still hold yourself to that expectation of delivering that day. Early on in my pregnancy I was told February 16th-Febraury 21st, and still I wanted the 16th...the sooner the better. Obviously I was a week over due when I had my baby boy and this is how my last day went being pregnant. (and this time it was a for sure last day, I always told Zach, "this could be our last wednesday together!" but for sure this was our last monday together and day together without our baby)
Monday I woke up knowing I'd be in the hospital that day preparing for baby to come the next day. I was told that I would get a phone call around 4pm to know what time I'd go into the hospital. So really it was a day of waiting. My mom had been in town for over a week so she was there with me. I had a slow morning getting ready for the day. My mom and I went out to lunch, Cafe Rio, and Lauren met up with us to spend time with us as well. Zach got home around 5pm and I still had no phone call. So we needed to get out and kill time! We headed to In-N-Out for dinner and Sweet Tooth Fairy for dessert. It started to rain that night as we rain across the parking lot. We were both nervous and excited all in the same. The anticipation was killing us to get to the hospital. Right as we were heading out of the bakery, my phone rings and the hospital said I could checkin at 8pm. We had about 50 minutes to get home and grab the last few things. (Zach already loaded the car that morning of all our hospital bags) Then we were off to have a baby!
We arrived at the hospital and checked into room 12. I changed out of my clothes and dressed into a gown, that I would be wearing for the next few days. Then Zach and I sat and waited in the cold, big, and empty hospital room to be greeted by a nurse. We met my nurse for the night, Natalie. She had me answer lots and lots of questions about my health and pregnancy. The whole process of being in the hospital still hadn't hit me at that moment. I was cold and nervous. During the questioning she then went over to a board on the wall and asked me what our baby's name will be, if I wanted to do their "sacred hour", who dad is, if i was getting an epidural, and so forth. While into the questions Lauren showed up, she was on her way home from spanish class and dropped in to say hi. Natalie strapped on a heart and contraction monitor for the baby, and showed me how to read everything. Then after that easy stuff it was time to get my IV out in...I HATE needles. she stuck the first one in my right forearm, it pinched a lot as she jabbed it in. It was just about to be taped down when she said the dreaded words, "that's not going to work." Then she explained I'd be getting on in my right hand instead. That was better in my opinion anyways..so she jabbed me again. I couldn't look at my hand for a few minutes because it freaked me out. I'm a big baby, but also I've never been in the hospital over night so I was even more freaked out! Anyways, that was done and over with and next was the real deal of why I was there over night.
The reason I checked in over night was because I had to have this pill inserted to help thin out my cervix before we could start the induction the next day. So moving forward that night my nurse checked to see if I was more effaced and dilated, and big shocker, I was the same as two weeks before. I was still at 1cm and 50% effaced. She did her thing, which hurt like hell, and then mentioned that my cervix was high up so hopefully that wouldn't be an issue? Then she inserted the pill...and we waited from there. Every three hours I would be checked and have another pill inserted until 8 or 9am when they would start the pitocin. It was a long night! I certainly did not sleep, and if I did at all it was a woppin 2 hours all together. I was too anxious and didn't think to sleep, everything was sinking in. Zach on the other hand slept through every check, every light that got turned on, every beep of a machine...everything. He needed it though, for the next day.
